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The Fourth Age, by Byron Reese

I received a copy of the book The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity for evaluation (thanks again!), and I can tell you that the way it has been written has some great advantages. The subject of where lead the developments of Artificial Intelligence and robots technology is not easy and very controversial with questions like: will all our jobs be taken by computers in the future? Are we facing the destruction of humanity by the future Artificial Intelligence robots? and so on.

Byron Reese presents us not with one possible future, but with different possible outcomes of Artificial Intelligence technology depending on our basic beliefs. Those basics beliefs are represented by the answers to classical though difficult philosophical questions, like: what are we, what is life for you (that will define if you believe a machine could be alive)? do you believe in a soul? and others alike. He guides your reasoning through these questions in a very easy way: he provides 3 or 4 possible answers for each question and he analyses each of them. That helps to clarify your thoughts, you can see which one resonates better with you. So it’s a multiple choice answer, what makes it much more easy to adhere to one possible answer, you don’t stay forever discussing it..

He uses the same method for each great question you ask yourself over the future society: will robots become conscious? will they take all our jobs? Will they take us over? You’ll have each time 3 or 4 possible choices of answers, and a discussion of the implications of each one. If you wonder, go to his website, he put there a quizz to see how ‘robot-proof’ is your job 😉

In conclusion, he’s not presenting his view of the future, but many options, each of them depending on your core beliefs. I liked it, it’s an easy and straightforward method to help us see the implications of actual technology on our future.